Category Archives: Banzaï

When I’m in a bad place I’ll take any sensory overload I can control. I’ll listen to music loud enough to block out the outside and most of my thoughts. I’ll dive into a film or an episode.

It was raining tonight. As I was waiting for the train I stood outside the station. The train that would take me away from my home and to the house I was trying to escape. I just stood outside, face up towards the rain. It wasn’t a storm, it barely rains hard here, it’s usually no more than a long drizzle but this was a little stronger. I stood in the darkness, cars and people would pass and look at me. Did they think I was high or crazy or suicidal? Perhaps a combination of those. I pushed them away from my mind, I knew they wouldn’t recognise me even if they saw me again. One thing I’ve learned is that people don’t care about those they don’t know, most people forget the faces they see instantly.

I was standing face up, eyes closed in the rain feeling it crash softly on my skin. It felt like a thousand small pokes, each one confirming the same thing: I was still alive. It wasn’t invasive or violent, it was kind of just… there. And it felt good after having felt untouchable for too long. It was a small moment of peace in the middle of all this turmoil. A space where I could breathe without feeling crushed by whatever the world throws at me. I could feel the solid ground at my feet. For a few seconds at a time I felt completely free and I didn’t care who stared, who pushed me down, who made me feel trapped, unwanted, useless, or invisible. I was myself. And I was free.

My aunt always asked me how my ears were so flat… you always told her that they just were, but I realised that maybe it was from all the times that I clamped them to my head with my hands so I wouldn’t hear the yelling.

I’ve been trying to listen to what people are saying for years but even now I still phase out after a while and I have to concentrate on listening. I’ve realised that after a while I’d stopped listening to you when you kept repeating the same things and just expecting my answers to change.

I’m messy, I hate doing things I’m told to and I can’t manage to keep up with people’s expectations of me, no matter how benign. I knew that if I showed you I was capable of certain things like keeping my room tidy and doing all of my homework immediately you would only ask more of me. I tried to lower your expectations so that the pressure would become more bearable and I’d have some time for myself.

I’m bad at saying things, expressing my feelings, speaking my thoughts or ideas and standing up for myself. You would never let me talk back, I was only allowed a few words before you would yell again and they were almost never the right ones. I learned to stay quiet so there would be less reason for you to yell at me.

I’m trying to come out of my shell, I want to be affectionate to the people I care about but it’s so hard and I’m always being awkward about it. You were never very good at expressing your affection and the more time passed the less you tried until I stopped hearing “I love you”.

My friends worry that I’m always trying to help others but I neglect myself. But I remember you calling me selfish as soon as I took so much as a second for me when you or a little brother could’ve used a little help, or when I didn’t leave what I wanted for others when they might’ve wanted it.

I’m a good judge of character, I can notice small changes in a person’s attitude that could indicate that something’s wrong or someone’s mad. You were never openly hostile until you exploded from all the little things in your life that were going wrong. So I had to learn to notice the small changes and signs indicating that you were angry so that I could avoid you or try to soften the metaphorical blow.

You made me, with my strengths and weaknesses and all these problems. You had the biggest part of all in shaping my personality and temperament but we’re so different and we still disagree on many things.

I know who you are, but for all the influence you’ve had in moulding me you still don’t understand much about who I am. I only wish that you could clear your mind of how you think I am and see me for myself, who I’ve become, for once.

Some days are better days, some days are worse days. This has been going on for about a month now, it’s never been this long or this bad. But there are different days and not every day is necessarily bad; there can be better days, or good moments even during the bad days. I’ve cried but I’ve smiled and laughed too and that’s part of what makes this bearable. Some days are roller-coasters where I can be happy in one instant and devastated in the next. One thing people might not know though is that some days are just waiting days.

Some days you wake up and you know you’re not going to do anything, sometimes out of a lack of will or motivation, but also sometimes out of choice. Sometimes you just don’t know what to do so you just focus on staying quiet and calm even if that means lying in bed all day. Or you could want to give people a rest, you could be feeling like you’re bothering the world with this and you don’t want to bother… so you waste a day, because you feel like the world is better off without you. It could also be that you don’t or no longer know who to turn to, so instead of burdening or frightening someone you’d rather contain it so at least you’re the only person it hurts. Or at least you hope so, because you can never know how other people are feeling. For me I guess the reason is a bit of everything. So I just move around, usually with music or watching a series to distract me from the deeper thoughts because I’d rather not hear them right now.

It’s sad, I think, how feelings other than “like” or “don’t like” quickly become taboo. How people are afraid of love or depression. Those are things rarely talked about in real life, things kept hushed because strong feelings scare people away. We’ve come to a point where emotion is weakness. When my friends see me mentally unwell most of them just ignore me, are they embarrassed? Are they afraid I’ll drag them down where I am? Or are they just afraid I might break if they touched me? They must know that isolation is a bad thing for me if I’m depressed but they isolate me anyway. No-one prepares you for this: they don’t prepare you for depression and they don’t prepare you for handling people or friends who could be depressed. Maybe something could be done, at school maybe, to talk about feelings instead of making children suppress them. I don’t know.

I’ve thought about dying. And yeah I know that’s not something you’re supposed to say but it’s true. I’ve never completely wanted to die, because I know to some extent what that could do to certain people. So I’ll stay alive to protect them. And I keep telling myself that it’ll get better, it has to, I can’t live like this forever and besides it always gets better. I try to hold on to that hope as much as I can. And I’m trying to be less harsh on myself, the depression is doing more than enough about that. I haven’t tried dying, and I’m hesitant to add “yet” at the end of that phrase, I can’t know what will happen, I can only hope I’ll stay strong enough for it to never happen. I don’t want to die. But sometimes it can be hard to want to live too. It tears me apart, mainly at night, it reminds me of all the times I’ve been rejected, all the bad things said about me, how people must feel about me, all the mistakes I’ve made and I feel like the world would be better off without me and it hurts. It hurts so much. I try to fight it, find counter-examples, but mostly I just try to make it stop because at the time I know that I can’t find enough examples to win. And then I think of what would happen if I died, and I see it happening to the people I love, the tearing apart, and I think “I can endure this for them”, because I don’t want them to feel this pain, ever.

People can be quick to tell you what’s wrong, to tell you off for some mistake you made or yell at you because they misunderstood your actions, people are better at accusing and blaming and insulting than telling others they love them. So it can be hard, when no-one tells you they love you and you have all these voices in your head, and outside of it, telling you what’s wrong with you. People take love for granted, but sometimes we need to hear that we are loved. If someone told me that, I might feel a little better, it could help fight all the bad things. But no-one tells me, because those who love me just take it for granted, they figure I don’t need reminding, but I can feel myself slipping and I’m desperately trying to hold on to anything, and everyone seems to be pulling away. If I just let go now, who would catch me in my fall?

​I felt funny. I guess I was just the right amount of drunk to be able to dance without overthinking my movements. I looked around the place where we were dancing; it wasn’t a castle nor a cave but a comfortable thing in between the two. My eyes darted around. Dancing this close with someone wasn’t something I’d done often before and I wasn’t very comfortable with it, so I distracted myself by looking around.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

He sounded a little hurt. It wasn’t particularly against him, I avoid eye contact with just about everyone I can avoid it with. I know it makes people uneasy, I’ve often been told to stop staring. My eyes are awake and always staring without any kind of veil in front of them, they don’t hide anything and they seldom miss a thing.

I shrugged the dreaded question away and made a very conscious effort to look him in the eyes. I made a point to stop looking towards the person I’d rather be with, I supposed this guy wasn’t too bad. I tried to shake the uneasy feeling I had about him, I was probably just overreacting, he was my friend right?

He held my stare while we danced and I realised he had a similar look. The song lasted a too long forever, but at least I was comfortably staring the devil in the eye. Unknowingly.

She used to draw and paint and her desk had… suffered. It was Tina’s desk. She’d spent a lot of time there, it was her way of escaping when the thoughts were too much. She could stay hours, the worthy art went on the walls.

Since we started living together I learned a lot about my best friend. Thinking she was always happy I discovered that she could also be incredibly sad, and it would just happen. When she wasn’t alone it wasn’t so bad but she didn’t like to bother people. She’d downgrade herself and it was hard for her to believe anyone liked her, making it harder to call for help. There were times when I’d come home to find her curled up in bed trembling and it broke my heart. I’d hold her tight and tell her I loved her, and it was true. I loved her completely platonically but I loved her more than anything. And I knew she loved me too.

One night she took my hand and had that wild look she got sometimes, saying “Let’s escape”. Last time we’d taken a late train away from Paris, and spent the night watching the stars. Space was something that fascinated us both. This look wasn’t playful though, she was hurt. Nightly excursions weren’t new, her favourite place to go was St. Michel. Sometimes we’d go wandering the cobbled streets with the souvenirs, crêpes, musicians; this time we sat along the Seine. She looked at me hesitantly, then kissed me on the lips, which was an odd thing for her to do in this state. The wild look dissipated as she leaned into the wall. “I love you. Never forget that.” She’d said. I knew what she’d meant but I was afraid of why she was saying it. She started shaking. “What’s wrong with me?” I held her and told her it was ok, that I was there for her. “Everyone else is gone” She whispered. I told her it wasn’t her fault, I knew she knew it, but it still hurt. “No-one’ll ever love me.”

“That’s not true,” I told her “I love you, and the others still love you.” I cited the short list of names of the people who were closest to her. “And I’m sure one day you’ll find the right person and you’ll both fall in love.”

I didn’t know if it was helping. I knew she was torturing herself and she knew it was hurting me. I didn’t mind, even the best people have bad moments. “I don’t deserve you.” She’d regretted that as soon as she’d said it. I shook her and looked her in the eye, “You deserve better than me Tina, but you at least deserve me. You have to know that.” She let herself be pulled back into my arms and kept saying “I’m sorry.” She was sorry for having said that, she was sorry about how she felt, she was sorry to be such a bother. I held her until she calmed down.

The following day we argued a lot, she wanted to get help so I told her to see a psychologist, she wanted to be locked up where she could stop hurting people until she got better. I was afraid that would just make it worse and I said I’d rather she be home than there alone.

When she left I was mainly angry at myself for not having been able to do more. I missed her and it hurt to know her there, she needed to be near her friends, I was scared for her. I looked through her desk drawers wondering what I’d missed. There was a sketch of one person being held protectively against another. It wasn’t much more than shapes but there was a message:

“If you ever read this I want you to know that you’re the biggest reason I haven’t gone mad. I just wanted to say thank you. But you probably won’t see this. I just wanted you to know.”

I put it away gently, not wanting it to get wet from my tears. I didn’t know what to do. I guess I finally felt some of the sadness she’d felt. I lay on the bed for ages. Maybe I’d gotten too attached to her, but I wasn’t apologising for that.

Tina’s desk is gone now. I wasn’t in love, but I did love her and I hope she’s okay.

Hey so it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything or even been on wordpress but seeing as I’m supposed to have a little more time now I’m doing my internship I wanted to get back into this. I messed this up so it’s late so I don’t think many people will see this… I’ll try harder next week.

When I first wrote this it had twice as many words, unfortunately I’m only allowed 750 T_T so this may seem a little short, I don’t know.

Writing is a game I suppose, the art of hiding things in plain sight… what part of that was true? What of it was me? Maybe some of you have an idea of who I am… but can you ever really know? (Is this a trick question meaning this post was completely fiction?)

Nate I was shocked to realise that although I’m an IT student I still don’t know exactly how the internet works but I will get back to you on that 😉

Sometimes I want to jump off a building
To see if I could fly,
Sometimes I want to run into a wall
To see which of us breaks first,
Sometimes I want to stab myself
To see if I still bleed,
Sometimes I want to stop feeling
To make it the thinking stop.

Sometimes I want to run away
Just to see how far I’d go,
Sometimes I want to lock myself out
And throw away the key,
Explore underground tunnels
Walking on train tracks,
Walk barefoot on the streets,
Stand in a t-shirt under a storm
And scream out loud
Until it all
Stops.

Make it stop.
All the voices in my head.
They’re too loud.
They ask the same questions over and over
And I don’t have the answers.
Make them leave me alone.

The people who could push the voices away
They’re not here right now.
So I’ll put my headphones on to drown out the noise.
And as long as there’s music
I’ll be ok
As long as they leave me alone

I was hurt. I couldn’t not be, I kept thinking of the way she’d stared at me terrified before running away. I hadn’t thought she would run from me. I never thought she could look so afraid of me.

I stared at the half empty bottle of vodka, blue from the smurfs that had been put in it for a small party a few days ago. I almost considered swapping it with the small Nutella pot in my hands.

“So that’s how it starts” I thought. I was always understanding new things about people, whether it be a general “people” or one person in particular. But whenever it mattered most I was left clueless about what to do and it was so frustrating.

And I had no reason to feel bad, it was just a mix of empathy and hurt. I shouldn’t have been the one that was hurt and I hated myself for feeling that way, but without speaking she had made me turn around and cry. Hurting her was the last thing I ever wanted to do, and yet it’s what I did. Without meaning it I had hurt the person who meant the most to me. And I had no right to be hurt.

The blobby smurf remains were beckoning… “Don’t you want to know how blue we taste?” They said. As for the rest… I can’t remember.

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